October 30, 2025 • 14 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve. So I came back for a long time.
I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking
succession of the days and nights was resumed. The sun
got golden again, the sky bleue. I breathed with greater freedom.
The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
(00:22):
hand spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw
again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.
These too changed and passed, and others came presently. When
the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I
began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture. The
(00:46):
thousand's hand ran back to the starting point. The day
and night flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls
of the laboratory came round me very gently. Now I
slowed the mechanism down. I saw one little thing that
seemed odd to me. I think I've told you that
(01:06):
when I set out before, my velocity became very high.
Missus Watchett had walked across the room, traveling, as it
seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned, I
passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory,
but now her every motion appeared to be the exact
inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower
(01:29):
end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory back foremost,
and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered.
Just before that, I seemed to see Hillia for a moment,
but he passed like a flash. Then I stopped the
machine and saw about me again the old, familiar laboratory,
(01:52):
my tools, my appliances, just as I had left them.
I got off the thing, very shaky, and sat down
upon my bench. For several minutes. I trembled violently. Then
I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again,
exactly as it had been. I might have slept there,
(02:13):
and the whole thing have been a dream, And yet
not exactly. The thing had started from the southeast corner
of the laboratory, it had come to rest again in
the northwest, against the wall where you saw it. That
gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to
the pedestal of the white sphinx into which the Morlocks
(02:35):
had carried my machine. For a time, my brain went stagnant,
presently I got up and came through the passage here,
limping because my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed.
I saw the pall mall gazette on the table by
the door. I found the date was indeed to day,
(02:55):
and looking at the time piece, saw the hour was
almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter
of plates. I hesitated. I felt so sick and weak.
Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened the door
on you. You know the rest. I washed and dined,
(03:16):
and now I am telling you the story I know.
He said, after a pause, that all this will be
absolutely incredible to you. To me, the one incredible thing
is that I am here to night, in this old,
familiar room, looking into your friendly faces, and telling you
these strange adventures. He looked at the medical man. No,
(03:43):
I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as
a lie or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in
the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies
of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat
my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of
art to enhance its interest, and taking it as a story.
(04:06):
What do you think of it? He took up his
pipe and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There
was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak, and
shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes
off the time Traveler's face and looked round at his audience.
(04:28):
They were in the dark, and little spots of color
swam before them. The medical man seemed absorbed in the
contemplation of our host. The editor was looking hard at
the end of his cigar the sixth. The journalist fumbled
for his watch. The others, as far as I remember,
were motionless. The editor stood up with a sigh. What
(04:52):
a pity it is. You're not a writer of stories,
he said, putting his hand on the time Traveler's shoulder.
You don't believe it, well, I thought not. The time
traveler turned to us. Where are the matches, he said?
He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing to
(05:13):
tell you the truth. I hardly believe it myself. And
yet his eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the
withered white flowers upon the little table. Then He turned
over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he
was looking at some half heeled scars on his knuckles.
The medical man rose, came to the lamp and examined
(05:36):
the flowers. The gynasium's odd, he said. The psychologist leaned
forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.
I'm hanged if it isn't quarter to one, said the journalist.
How shall we get home? Plenty of cabs at the station,
said the psychologist. It's a curious thing, said the medical man.
(06:00):
But I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers?
May I have them? The time traveler hesitated. Then suddenly,
certainly not where did you really get them? Said the
medical man. The time traveler put his hand to his head.
He spoke like one who is trying to keep hold
(06:21):
of an idea that eluded him. They were put into
my pocket by Weena when I traveled into time. He
stared around the room. I'm damned if it isn't all
going This room and you and the atmosphere of every
day is too much for my memory. Did I ever
make a time machine or a model of a time machine?
(06:45):
Or is it all only a dream? They say life
is a dream, a precious, poor dream at times. But
I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And
where did the dream come from? I must look at
that machine, if there is one. He caught up the
lamp swiftly and carried it, flaring red, through the door
(07:07):
into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering
light of the lamp was the machine, sure enough, squat
ugly and askew, a thing of brass, ebony, ivory and translucent,
glimmering quartz, solid to the touch. For I put out
my hand and felt the rail of it, and with
(07:28):
brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of
grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail
bent awry. The time traveler put the lamp down on
the bench and ran his hand along the damaged rail.
It's all right now, he said. The story I told
you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out
(07:50):
here in the cold. He took up the lamp, and
in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking room.
He came into the hall with us and helped the
her on with his coat. The medical man looked into
his face, and with a certain hesitation told him he
was suffering from over work, at which he laughed hugely.
(08:11):
I remember him standing in the open doorway bawling good night.
I shared a cab with the editor. He thought the
tale a gaudy lie. For my own part, I was
unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so
fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I
(08:34):
lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I
determined to go next day and see the time traveler again.
I was told he was in the laboratory, and, being
on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute
at the time machine and put out my hand and
(08:54):
touched the lever. At that the squat substantial looking mass
sway like a bow shaken by the wind. Its instability
startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of
the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle.
I came back through the corridor. The time traveler met
(09:16):
me in the smoking room. He was coming from the house.
He had a small camera under one arm and a
knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me
and gave me an elbow to shake. I'm frightfully busy,
said he with that thing in there, But is it
not some hoax? I said, do you really travel through time? Really?
(09:41):
And truly I do? And he looked frankly into my eyes.
He hesitated, his eye wandered about the room. I only
want half an hour, he said, I know why you came,
and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here.
If you'll stop to lunch, AP prove you this time
traveling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you'll
(10:05):
forgive my leaving you now. I consented, hardly comprehending then
the full import of his words, and he nodded and
went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair and took
up a daily paper. What was he going to do
before lunch time? Then suddenly I was reminded by an
(10:27):
advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher,
at two. I looked at my watch and saw that
I could barely save that engagement. I got up and
went down the passage to tell the time traveler. As
I took hold of the handle of the door. I
heard an exclamation oddly truncated at the end, and a
(10:47):
click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round
me as I opened the door, and from within came
the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The
time traveler was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly,
indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and
brass for a moment, a figure so transparent that the
(11:10):
bench behind, with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct.
But this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The
time machine had gone, say for a subsiding stir of dust.
The further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane
of the skylight had apparently just been blown in. I
(11:33):
felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened,
and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange
thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into
the garden opened and the man servant appeared. We looked
at each other. Then ideas began to come. Has mister
(11:55):
gone out that way? Said I? No, SA, no one
has come out this I was expecting to find him
here at that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson,
I stayed on waiting for the Time Traveler, waiting for
the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and
(12:16):
photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning
now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The
time Traveler vanished three years ago, and as everybody knows now,
he has never returned epilogue. One cannot choose, but wonder
(12:38):
will he ever return? It may be that he swept
back into the past and fell among the blood drinking,
hairy savages of the age of unpolished stone, into the
abysses of the Cretaceous sea, or among the grotesque sarians,
the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times, even now,
(13:01):
if I may use the phrase, be wandering on some
placiosaurus haunted oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline
lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward
into one of the nearer ages in which men are
still men? But with the riddles of our own time
answered and its wearisome problem solved, into the manhood of
(13:25):
the race. For I, for my own part, cannot think
that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and
mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time. I say for
my own part. He I know, for the question had
been discussed among us long before the time machine was made.
(13:45):
Thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw
in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping
that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers
in the end. If that is so, it remains for
us to live as though it were not so. But
to me the future is still black and blank, is
(14:08):
of vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by
the memory of his story. And I have by me
for my comfort two strange white flowers, shriveled now and
brown and flat and brittle, to witness that even when
mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness
(14:31):
still lived on in the heart of man. The End
of the Time Machine by H. G. Wells
Chapter twelve. So I came back for a long time.
I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking
succession of the days and nights was resumed. The sun
got golden again, the sky bleue. I breathed with greater freedom.
The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
(00:22):
hand spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw
again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.
These too changed and passed, and others came presently. When
the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I
began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture. The
(00:46):
thousand's hand ran back to the starting point. The day
and night flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls
of the laboratory came round me very gently. Now I
slowed the mechanism down. I saw one little thing that
seemed odd to me. I think I've told you that
(01:06):
when I set out before, my velocity became very high.
Missus Watchett had walked across the room, traveling, as it
seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned, I
passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory,
but now her every motion appeared to be the exact
inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower
(01:29):
end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory back foremost,
and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered.
Just before that, I seemed to see Hillia for a moment,
but he passed like a flash. Then I stopped the
machine and saw about me again the old, familiar laboratory,
(01:52):
my tools, my appliances, just as I had left them.
I got off the thing, very shaky, and sat down
upon my bench. For several minutes. I trembled violently. Then
I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again,
exactly as it had been. I might have slept there,
(02:13):
and the whole thing have been a dream, And yet
not exactly. The thing had started from the southeast corner
of the laboratory, it had come to rest again in
the northwest, against the wall where you saw it. That
gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to
the pedestal of the white sphinx into which the Morlocks
(02:35):
had carried my machine. For a time, my brain went stagnant,
presently I got up and came through the passage here,
limping because my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed.
I saw the pall mall gazette on the table by
the door. I found the date was indeed to day,
(02:55):
and looking at the time piece, saw the hour was
almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter
of plates. I hesitated. I felt so sick and weak.
Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened the door
on you. You know the rest. I washed and dined,
(03:16):
and now I am telling you the story I know.
He said, after a pause, that all this will be
absolutely incredible to you. To me, the one incredible thing
is that I am here to night, in this old,
familiar room, looking into your friendly faces, and telling you
these strange adventures. He looked at the medical man. No,
(03:43):
I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as
a lie or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in
the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies
of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat
my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of
art to enhance its interest, and taking it as a story.
(04:06):
What do you think of it? He took up his
pipe and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There
was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak, and
shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes
off the time Traveler's face and looked round at his audience.
(04:28):
They were in the dark, and little spots of color
swam before them. The medical man seemed absorbed in the
contemplation of our host. The editor was looking hard at
the end of his cigar the sixth. The journalist fumbled
for his watch. The others, as far as I remember,
were motionless. The editor stood up with a sigh. What
(04:52):
a pity it is. You're not a writer of stories,
he said, putting his hand on the time Traveler's shoulder.
You don't believe it, well, I thought not. The time
traveler turned to us. Where are the matches, he said?
He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing to
(05:13):
tell you the truth. I hardly believe it myself. And
yet his eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the
withered white flowers upon the little table. Then He turned
over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he
was looking at some half heeled scars on his knuckles.
The medical man rose, came to the lamp and examined
(05:36):
the flowers. The gynasium's odd, he said. The psychologist leaned
forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.
I'm hanged if it isn't quarter to one, said the journalist.
How shall we get home? Plenty of cabs at the station,
said the psychologist. It's a curious thing, said the medical man.
(06:00):
But I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers?
May I have them? The time traveler hesitated. Then suddenly,
certainly not where did you really get them? Said the
medical man. The time traveler put his hand to his head.
He spoke like one who is trying to keep hold
(06:21):
of an idea that eluded him. They were put into
my pocket by Weena when I traveled into time. He
stared around the room. I'm damned if it isn't all
going This room and you and the atmosphere of every
day is too much for my memory. Did I ever
make a time machine or a model of a time machine?
(06:45):
Or is it all only a dream? They say life
is a dream, a precious, poor dream at times. But
I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And
where did the dream come from? I must look at
that machine, if there is one. He caught up the
lamp swiftly and carried it, flaring red, through the door
(07:07):
into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering
light of the lamp was the machine, sure enough, squat
ugly and askew, a thing of brass, ebony, ivory and translucent,
glimmering quartz, solid to the touch. For I put out
my hand and felt the rail of it, and with
(07:28):
brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of
grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail
bent awry. The time traveler put the lamp down on
the bench and ran his hand along the damaged rail.
It's all right now, he said. The story I told
you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out
(07:50):
here in the cold. He took up the lamp, and
in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking room.
He came into the hall with us and helped the
her on with his coat. The medical man looked into
his face, and with a certain hesitation told him he
was suffering from over work, at which he laughed hugely.
(08:11):
I remember him standing in the open doorway bawling good night.
I shared a cab with the editor. He thought the
tale a gaudy lie. For my own part, I was
unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so
fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I
(08:34):
lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I
determined to go next day and see the time traveler again.
I was told he was in the laboratory, and, being
on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute
at the time machine and put out my hand and
(08:54):
touched the lever. At that the squat substantial looking mass
sway like a bow shaken by the wind. Its instability
startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of
the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle.
I came back through the corridor. The time traveler met
(09:16):
me in the smoking room. He was coming from the house.
He had a small camera under one arm and a
knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me
and gave me an elbow to shake. I'm frightfully busy,
said he with that thing in there, But is it
not some hoax? I said, do you really travel through time? Really?
(09:41):
And truly I do? And he looked frankly into my eyes.
He hesitated, his eye wandered about the room. I only
want half an hour, he said, I know why you came,
and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here.
If you'll stop to lunch, AP prove you this time
traveling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you'll
(10:05):
forgive my leaving you now. I consented, hardly comprehending then
the full import of his words, and he nodded and
went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair and took
up a daily paper. What was he going to do
before lunch time? Then suddenly I was reminded by an
(10:27):
advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher,
at two. I looked at my watch and saw that
I could barely save that engagement. I got up and
went down the passage to tell the time traveler. As
I took hold of the handle of the door. I
heard an exclamation oddly truncated at the end, and a
(10:47):
click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round
me as I opened the door, and from within came
the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The
time traveler was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly,
indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and
brass for a moment, a figure so transparent that the
(11:10):
bench behind, with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct.
But this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The
time machine had gone, say for a subsiding stir of dust.
The further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane
of the skylight had apparently just been blown in. I
(11:33):
felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened,
and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange
thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into
the garden opened and the man servant appeared. We looked
at each other. Then ideas began to come. Has mister
(11:55):
gone out that way? Said I? No, SA, no one
has come out this I was expecting to find him
here at that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson,
I stayed on waiting for the Time Traveler, waiting for
the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and
(12:16):
photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning
now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The
time Traveler vanished three years ago, and as everybody knows now,
he has never returned epilogue. One cannot choose, but wonder
(12:38):
will he ever return? It may be that he swept
back into the past and fell among the blood drinking,
hairy savages of the age of unpolished stone, into the
abysses of the Cretaceous sea, or among the grotesque sarians,
the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times, even now,
(13:01):
if I may use the phrase, be wandering on some
placiosaurus haunted oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline
lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward
into one of the nearer ages in which men are
still men? But with the riddles of our own time
answered and its wearisome problem solved, into the manhood of
(13:25):
the race. For I, for my own part, cannot think
that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and
mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time. I say for
my own part. He I know, for the question had
been discussed among us long before the time machine was made.
(13:45):
Thought but cheerlessly of the advancement of mankind, and saw
in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping
that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers
in the end. If that is so, it remains for
us to live as though it were not so. But
to me the future is still black and blank, is
(14:08):
of vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by
the memory of his story. And I have by me
for my comfort two strange white flowers, shriveled now and
brown and flat and brittle, to witness that even when
mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness
(14:31):
still lived on in the heart of man. The End
of the Time Machine by H. G. Wells
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